Tag Archives: stuart duncan

CLICK HERE for a red carpet photo gallery from the 55th annual Grammy Awards. Here, from left, John Paul White, Joy Williams, T Bone Burnett and Taylor Swift accept the award for song written for visual media for "Safe and Sound" (From The Hunger Games) at the 55th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday, Feb. 10, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

The Tennessean is at Los Angeles’ Staples Center reporting live from the 55th annual Grammy Awards. With less than an hour before showtime, the pre-telecast ceremony has ended; below is a list of Nashville-connected Grammy winners.

Perhaps it’s easier to identify which Grammy categories don’t have Nashville connections than which ones do. We never take the easy way out. Here is our annual guide to noteworthy Grammy nominations with Music City connections.

Record of the Year

Three of the six top record candidates hail from Nashville, with The Black Keys’ roots rock, Kelly Clarkson’s throb-pop and Taylor Swift’s crossover smash competing against category favorites from Gotye, fun. and Frank Ocean. Music City is unlikely to come out with a win here, but the Nash-strength in a category traditionally dominated by New York and Los Angeles-based efforts is a telling indicator of our Tennessee capital’s successfully ecumenical approach to record-making.

Album of the Year

White and the Keys are at the forefront of a new century of Nashville rock resurgence that also includes Kings of Leon, Jeff the Brotherhood and others.

Song of the Year

“Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You)” by Kelly Clarkson.

Clarkson, who first entered the popular fray as an “American Idol” diva, has lately bought a place in Nashville and, with the encouragement of Reba McEntire and many more, is moving about freely between pop and country realms. It’s as if she doesn’t understand that the point of music-making is to do the same thing, over and over, all your life.

Click here to see a photo gallery from Wednesday's 'Grammy Nominations Concert Live!!' show. Here, Taylor Swift and LL Cool J perform a rap version of one of her songs during the Bridgestone Arena show on Wednesday night. (Photo: Sam Simpkins/The Tennessean)

But what about three of six all-genre nominations for Record of the Year? And a couple of all-genre Album of the Year nominations? And nods for Best New Artist, Best Pop Instrumental, Best Rock Song (two of those), Best rock Album (two of those, as well), Best Spoken Word Album and Best Song Written For Visual Media?

“The record kept telling us where it wanted to go,” says Shaw, who grew up listening to bluegrass. “The one thing I like about bluegrass is all the virtuosos out there, and you’re just standing there having your face burned off with flames coming off these acoustic instruments. We decided the record needed to go that next step (with guest artists).”

Shaw will sign copies of the CD from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday at The Opry Shop inside the Grand Ole Opry House. After the signing, he’s set to play both the 7 and 9:30 p.m. Grand Ole Opry shows.

“I’m looking forward to it,” he says of performing on the Opry. “It’s one of those things where I told my mother. Growing up, you played (the Grand Ole Opry) and it meant you made it to the top. She was very excited.”

Over the past four years, the West Coast-based Academy of Country Music has chosen to award its special awards recipients and non-televised category winners in a separate and relaxed Nashville ceremony, rather than during the ACM’s tightly scripted spring awards show in Las Vegas.

Monday’s fourth annual ACM Honors found the star-packed Ryman Auditorium filled with heartened award-winners and with well-wishers who seemed to appreciate the chance to pay appropriate homage, rather than to merely clap during quickie camera time.Continue reading →

Jimmy Webb would hold a place among the music world's most revered songsmiths if he stopped working a good while ago -- his is the pen behind "Wichita Lineman," "By The Time I Get To Phoenix" and a host of other famed tunes, and his list of honors is fittingly long, from Grammy awards to Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame membership.

He's not stopping, though, and this month he's serving up a new celebration of his body of work. Webb's new album, Just Across The River, collects new interpretations of some of his best-known songs, recorded here in Nashville alongside an impressive cast of collaborators locals (and not-so-locals) will recognize.

River was largely recorded live over two days at Nashville's Sound Emporium, with contributions from a heavy group of players, including multi-instrumentalist Bryan Sutton, fiddle and mandolin player Stuart Duncan, guitarist Pat Buchanan, rock mainstay Mark Knopfler (who lent lead guitar duties to "By The Time I Get To Phoenix") and Dobro master Jerry Douglas (who plays on the album's version of "Wichita Lineman").

"From the very first song, first take, first note this record seemed blessed," Webb said in a statement. "I hope everyone else feels what we did as we listened to the first rough mixes. And then as each piece fell into place, a fully realized, conceptual work of art emerged."

Just Across The River is due out on June 29. The full tracklisting follows after the jump.Continue reading →

In between all that, he's squeezing in two Station Inn (402 12th Ave. S., 255‑3307) performances this week. On Wednesday, June 9 at 9 p.m., he'll front his Tim O'Brien Band at the Station Inn, and on Thursday, June 10 he'll play the Inn as part of Hot Rize.

O'Brien's Chicken & Egg album is due for a July 13 release. He also participated in Dierks Bentley's just-released Up On The Ridge album, singing, playing and co-writing one song.

His Wednesday Station Inn show finds him collaborating with Bryan Sutton, Stuart Duncan and Mike Bub, while the Hot Rize show will be with Sutton, Pete Wernick and Nick Forster.

The Wednesday cover charge is $20, with Thursday's cover set at $25. No advance tickets; pay at the door.

It’s not like Béla Fleck needed another band. Among the world’s foremost banjo players, Fleck had the Flecktones, of course, his famously agile genre-hopping quartet.

In the past few years he’d also done an album with jazz great Chick Corea, written and recorded a concerto with tabla master Zakir Hussain and virtuoso bassist Edgar Meyer, and released Throw Down Your Heart, an album of songs recorded with African musicians that won two Grammys.

He also had an acoustic trio with fiddler Casey Driessen and guitarist Bryan Sutton, and that was the band he was supposed to bring to Nashville’s Earth Day festival this weekend. But Sutton couldn’t make the gig, so in classic Fleck fashion, he decided to start a new band from scratch with a completely left-field lineup.

So what will the audience hear in his free concert Saturday, April 17 at Centennial Park? It goes like this: banjo, fiddle, trombone, drums.

“I’m ending up putting together an unorthodox lineup of instruments to do something different, which is kind of fun, except it’s a kind of high-profile place to be doing something that’s never happened before,” Fleck said via phone as he fought off jet lag from a recent tour in Australia.

Not one for re-treading, Fleck has written a brace of new tunes for the group.Continue reading →

Jeff Bridges, in a scene from 'Crazy Heart' (photo: Fox Searchlight/Lorey Sebastian). SPOILER NOTE: Plot points related to this film's ending are noted in this story.

There are moments in the film Crazy Heart, as Jeff Bridges’ character drives hundreds of miles to play for drunks at a bowling alley or devolves into desperation, alcoholism and humiliation — all for what Townes Van Zandt called “the sake of the song” — that beg the question, “Why on earth would someone do that for a living?”

Like dozens of Nashville troubadours, Bridges’ Bad Blake is highly intelligent, well-read and charismatic. He doesn’t have to slog from town to town, playing for diminishing audiences. Except maybe he does.

“I don’t think he has much of a choice in the matter,” said Bridges, who patterned his character after Van Zandt, Stephen Bruton, Billy Joe Shaver, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown and other singer-songwriters who’ve lived the weariness and discomfort of the road. “The stage is Bad’s kingdom. Drunk or sober, he’s at home up there. And he loves the music so much.”

It’s a life that is understood by those who live it, but it often looks from the outside like a pathway to insanity, even if alcohol isn’t a part of the equation.Continue reading →